Here's a story that some might find amusing... A climbing partner of mine, like many of us South East coaster colorado transplants, cut our teeth at Seneca. Well one day several years ago, Paul, (his real name) had made the ritual drive from State college, PA (from which he was a student at the time) to Seneca, like he did most weekends. As a typical college student, paul and friend left late friday night and crashed at a late hour. Upon their late hour arrivial at yokum's campground, paul and friend promptly crashed out under the beautiful southern sky, with paul sleeping on the ground and paul's friend sleeping on top of the picnic table. The sun rose, and as it did, paul was awoken by something. A person, clad in applachain attire, was extending a long skinny sticklike object, forward slowly and retracting slowly like fashion toward his friend who was still sleeping on the picnic table. Promptly, the local mustered some sort of broken english: "Arez Youz Russian?" Friend: "Excuse me sir?" Local: "Arez Youz Russian?" The local then pointed toward his particular style of hat, which happend to be mad bomber style of hat. The friend promptly said: "No sir I'm not russian" Local: ok, well the you boyz gust leave me some beer for the campground fee and have yourselvz a good day"

Good one! Must have been Princess Snowbird? He'd take a bag of weed too from what I hear. I was always too much of a cheap bastard to pay and slept in my truck parked by the dumpster out behind the Gendarme. That way I could craftily stagger "home" safely after a late night on the porch.

One of my funniest memories of Seneca was showing up and realizing my partner had flaked out on me. I saw this threesome of young guys pulling a rack of rigid stem friends out of a trunk and figured with a rack that old they must really be experienced and maybe the third dude would be game for climbing with me. When I introduced myself and proposed my idea, they confessed they had borrowed the rack and were here to learn how to clinb on gear but that they had done a lot of sport climbing! The suggested they all come with me for the day. It was better than nothing so off we went. We all had a lot of fun doing my favorite gumby linkup of Skyline followed by scrambling up Broadwy Ledge and then up into the notch for Gunsight to South Peak. After letting them examine gear placements and observe their safety while they followed, I let one of them, the most enthusiastic guy, lead out of the notch on P1 of Gunsight to S. Peak. He was 1/2 way out and I encouraged him to look down since its so cool to see that much air under your feet on a 5.3 and he got really nervous. His anchor was basically the whole rack!

Heck, since Im on the subject, another favorite memory. Crack of Dawn was my first 5.10 onsight and rapping off it I was super psyched until my buddy, a guide there, commented that Id used the arete to the left of the crak and therefore it was really 5.9. I was grumbling to my good friend, Arthur, the current owner, with his fwife Diane, of the Gendarme, a guy who knows his way around Seneca better than most, and he told me something along the lines of, "Fuck them, but if you want to convince yourself you can climb 5.10 go climb Orangeaid."

OK, Arthur, no problem. Somehow Id followed a 5.10b variation start to Pleasant O and also followed Spock's Brain during a full day before finally getting around to Orangeaid which was kind of funny to try my hardest lead at the end of a pretty full day of climbing but there I was and 1/3 of the way up I was already getting pumped. In the crux I was fried but hanging in there. I could see the easy stuff ahead and knew I had (barely) enough juice to get there but badly needed pro. I grabbed a biner w/about 4 TCUs on it, plugged one in and clipped the rope through the racking biner, knowing I would not need those guys to get to the top and began pulling down and frantically stepping up to bigger holds when my wife called up, "Hey, you left a bunch of cams behind" my loving reply of, "No fucking shit!" took a while to live down. I made it to the top and finally convinced myself I could onsight 5.10 at Seneca though so it was cool and I was eventually forgiven for the comment.